Missouri man sentenced for son's death in car accident

Ninety miles east of Joplin, a Missouri man was recently sentenced to 14
years in prison. The Sparta resident pleaded guilty to charges involving
the death of his three-year-old son and injuries to four other people in a
car accident.

The 34-year-old was behind the wheel of a Toyota when the car crossed the
highway's center line and was hit by a Ford Explorer. A car then smashed
into the Explorer.

The man's young son was in the back seat of the Toyota; the boy's
mother was in the front seat.

A Missouri State Highway Patrol officer was on the scene of the crash just
eight minutes after the collisions took place. The officer wrote in his
report that he "detected a strong odor of an intoxicating beverage
emitting from (the father). I also noticed that his speech was slurred
and he spoke slow."

The man refused to perform a field sobriety test and later, at a Springfield
hospital, he refused to submit a blood sample to be tested for the presence
of alcohol.

He told the officer that he had consumed a couple of beers with his lunch.

Approximately two and a half hours after the crashes, the trooper seized
a sample of the man's blood. The blood alcohol content was at that
time 0.067 percent.

However, a sample the hospital had drawn two hours earlier showed a blood
alcohol level of 0.102 percent, well over the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

The man is already serving a four-year sentence for violating a probation
order from a nonpayment of child support conviction.

This tragedy obviously can't be undone. The damage the man has caused
to his own family is forever.

However, in many cases, accident injury victims are left to deal with medical
bills and lost wages on their own. Many of those victims insist that the
person who did the damage should bear the burden of those bills.

An experienced personal injury attorney not only understands the law, but
knows how it can be applied to hold those responsible for damage fully
accountable.

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Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual
case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt
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